Betsy McCaughey Quotes

We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on. This is going to be an issue in 2006 and it's going to be an issue in 2008, because we're going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, "Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not, or is that going to be up to your loved ones?

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

The Karen Ann Quinlan case is where the right to life and the right to die got bound together, and I don't think they've ever gotten untangled.

I suppose, if helping a patient die is killing, I suppose I'm a killer.

We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.

The tragic case of Terri Schiavo in Florida highlights the importance of making our health-care wishes known.

Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Yes, we need euthanasia, for certain cases where people are in comas or too immobile to even press a button.

President Obama says he will not support a healthcare plan where the government gets to decide whether to, quote, 'pull the plug on Grandma.' Apparently, Obama's plan calls for the much quicker pillow option.

The choice of euthanasia becomes more serious when it takes the form of a murder committed by others on a person who has in no way requested it and who has never consented to it. The height of arbitrariness and injustice is reached when certain people, such as physicians or legislators, arrogate to themselves the power to decide who ought to live and who ought to die.

That term was used with hyperbole about the parts of the health care bill where doctors are mandated, if people are on Medicare and of a certain age or in serious physical condition, to counsel them on their end-of-life alternatives. I don't believe that was a death panel.

Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.

If I ever went, I'd want to go peacefully in my sleep. I wouldn't want to plan my own death.

The end of life is likely to be an important focus for innovation. Most people die in hospitals, tied up with tubes and with their bodies pumped full of drugs. Yet most would rather die at home and with more control over the timing and manner of their death.

Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the 'slippery slope': once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.

Most of the debate over the cultures of death and life is about process. The debate focuses on the technology available to determine how we prolong life and how and when we end it.

Finding a balance between hoped for cures and respect for life: That is the challenge.

It is the duty of the doctor to prolong life. It is not his duty to prolong dying.

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share. It is time to go.

I think a lot of us share a fear that we and people we love will lose control of our own destinies at the end of life.

The proposed Health Care Reform bill will put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.

First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?

When you have multiple patients on life support, you don't pull the plug on one just to save another.

I've always said when age or infirmity gets the better of me, I'm off to whichever civilised country lets the elderly die with dignity.

Have a living will if you don't want long-term life support. It makes the decision easier for the family.